


Multilinear Progressions

by Cucolla



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:48:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cucolla/pseuds/Cucolla
Summary: Through many worlds, the Social Group changes but remains oddly interconnected. [Various AU one-shots]
Relationships: Sheldon Cooper & Leonard Hofstadter, Sheldon Cooper & Rajesh Koothrappali
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	Multilinear Progressions

**Author's Note:**

> Premise: Rajesh Koothrappali spend more years in Cambridge before moving to Pasadena. This gets in the way of the creation of the social circle, he stills gets to hang out with Dr. Cooper. [Gen, Raj & Sheldon friendship, Leonard is also there]

He has no friends in America. Rajesh Koothappali decided, after four years, that it was maybe how things would always be. After all, he never made real friends in India or England so it could be that, sad as it was, he was not made for friendship. There was no way to make peace with it, but after many more breakdowns and nights swallowing in self-pity that he is willing to admit, he got to a place where he could live with it. There were people he knew and people he talked too but his emergency contact was still Priya’s number in England. He trusted her to handle gracefully the news of him being found death after 3 weeks and softening the blow for his parents.

When he told her, the answer was that he was being dramatic: Mummy would demand someone look for him after 2 weeks missing and CSI had sufficiently prepared them to his inevitably death by gang violence in an alley in America. Priya sense of humor was always too dry for Raj but it comforted him some. He knew he had a penchant for the drama, he was aware and his situation could be much worse.

Daily life was filled with his work, good food, video games and comics. California was as beautiful as he had dreamed. He liked his apartment and job and America, but more than anything he really hated India. If he was set to be lonely freak for life at least he could do it on a country whose food he actually likes and where he was not embarrassing Mummy and Daddy and probably all his family with said freakishly loneliness. He liked his parents and sibling but they all had lives and on Skype videocalls he could even pretended his was not that pathetic.

It is friendship really craves when he still cries at night in front of _Heathers_ or _Dostana._ Love would be grand too but without talking to women, that’s not happening anything soon. At least he didn’t have friends to find out that embarrassing secret. Maybe, he shouldn’t have waited so long to go to America. He was used to Cambrige and while he had always dreamed about California he was scared. For two years he backed up at the last possible second. It probably wouldn’t have change a lot anyway.

***

\- God, I’m so messed up in the head.- He said that often to himself with various degrees of sadness. Today he was just a bit annoyed.

He almost crashed Leslie Winkle car at the parking lot and she lectured him for 20 minutes. People at campus had a general sense that he was a man of few words and shy around strangers. He had found that one can get around a lot when the research are advancing favorably. At work he was not a complete hermit, he knew people: Bert to whom he talked sometimes and Dr. Kripke who he disliked but doesn’t antagonized, even Dr. Hofstadter and Dr. Wolowitz who had always been nice they had seem to invite him to hang out a couple of times but it was never direct. He doesn’t think they really meant. Besides, their friendship seemed to be pretty exclusive and people word around campus said that they “shares” Leslie favors and he was not sure he wanted to get in the middle of that.

The person who talked to him the most was surprisingly Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Still, he ranked after “Hofstowitiz”, as he calls them sometimes, and Bert in his list of friendly acquaintances. Raj knows Dr. Cooper on the most superficial way that one can know another person. It is very impressive how they can have lunch and collaborate with a man and yet not know a single thing about his life. He didn’t even knew he was Texan until somehow mentioned it. (But that’s also because, to this day he is still terrible at American accents and would mistake a New Yorker for a Floridian and probably an Irish actor trying too hard. It’s because chatter is a waste of time for the tall physicist.)

They met over the study of the dark matter collision in space Dr. Cooper was conducting. The tall man entered the telescope room, knocked three times on an open door and pretty much demanded he worked with for him.

He complied partly because he is completely spineless and partly because he though that was the American straightforwardness he had heard about. Besides Dr. Sheldon Cooper was kind of a big deal at the University, he published a lot and was said to be a savant. When Barry mockingly offered his condolences he knew there was something going on.

A brilliant man, Dr. Cooper. Absolutely insane, too. His eccentricities don’t seem to arm his life but Raj imagines that being afraid of birds, hating human touch and not driving must be complicate. Though he is hardly on a position to judge, he cannot utter a word in front of half women and he still lives.

It was hard to decide what to be more amazed of: the sheer genius of the scientific propositions he makes or the incredible unsettling things that he said when talking about anything besides science. The first meeting he is fairly intimidated, Dr. Cooper is tall, stiff and completely arrogant.

\- Dr. Koothrappali I will require you to keep the safe distance of one meter from me, my desk and chair. Please feel free to sit in the floor respecting agreed perimeter.

Dr. Cooper says it so casually that Raj is taken back. That’s the more normal things he hears that day. He is requested to wash his hands every 6 minutes, had to sign a form to request an aspirin and see some sexy sexy hypothesis. Calling them that is a mistake he will never again commit.

Humans are really adaptable creatures, that’s why Raj doesn’t even question it when he is asked to shoo “his enemy Dr. Hofstandter”. And they have collaborating for some days. Raj has learned that jokes are forbidden, interrupting is pointless and taking notes is encouraged when the older physicist talks to him. He doesn’t know what to do because Leonard Hofstandter has always been very nice and he was literally coming to see if Dr. Cooper wanted to sign in for an academic conferences which sounded helpful.

\- Dr. Hofstandter.- Raj remembers clearing his voice for almost a minute and wishing for the sweet release of death.- Dr. Cooper asked me to tell you he is otherwise occupied…

\- Dr. Koothrappali have you manage to get rid of the repugnant presence at my doorstep? - Came the voice from inside.

Leonard smile was a bit sad, but it always was like that.

\- No problem, I will be going, I sent an email anyway. Good day to you both.

When he came inside again, and was informed that he failed an incredible simple task, he saw that Cooper was somehow shaken. Raj notices, his eyes fixing the floor and his shoulders alittle more hunched, he is a little sorry, just a bit, until he see how Dr. Cooper has erased part of his corrections. Working with the man is mentally stimulating which Raj likes, and Raj is incapable to stand for himself about any other thing that astrophysics which Dr. Cooper likes. That’s probably why at the end of the first week he signed a four page Collaboration Agreement.

He consults Priya who is now a graduated lawyer and she calls him an idiot for signing anything and said that he had been completely screwed over on the Section 4.1.: “Publications protocol” but Raj feels oddly excited by the collaboration. He thinks that it would be interesting to get to know such a remarkable scholar.

***

When Dr. Cooper starts to sit with him at the cafeteria he had hoped they could become friends but his hopes were cut short. They were only to interact informally on Thursday every other week. Dr. Cooper had explained it to him on the first of their scheduled meals. It was apparently section of the Collaboration Agreement he hadn’t notice was there.

\- These conversations will allow us to discuss our respective collaborations and advancement on our fields while avoiding any potential over-familiarity incompatible with a productive professional relationship. And if I can give a piece of professional advice, seeing the quality of your research you shouldn’t seek such social distractions either. After all, there is much work to do in your main research subject until it is remotely coherent. Much work.

So, Dr. Cooper is not his friend and would not be and thinks his research sucks.

\- You don’t want to be my friend but still want to have lunch with me? - He tries to put bite but it does not sounds so aggressive when it leaves is mouths.

\- Exactly, friendship is full of aleatory rules that get in the way of most discussion. Furthermore it requires a level of energy that a scientist as myself must devote to his work. - He said like it was the most natural thing on the world. - I do no seek friendship Dr. Koothrappali. I did entertain the notions in my youth, to be honest but it is simply not worth it. Friendship I’ve learned ends in betrayal at best and at worst on time lost on stupid people.

He takes a bit of his food, carefully separated in his plate in different parts.

\- Take my neighbors for example, whose names I know only because of the frequent noise complaints I feel against them. So this young couple Penelope and Zack, they are well-meaning simpletons and have try to communicate with me. But what would I gain for discussing shoes or sports with them? I believe I might be a Homo Novus, my brain wired for better understanding of the world. I know I’m not an easy man to deal with, not even our detested Dr. Hofstantder could comprehend my devotion to science. I don’t wish to waste my time anymore, surely you understand.

Raj really, really doesn’t. He would give a great many things to have friends, even more to have a girlfriend. He thinks about it on the nights he stays on the telescope room. Those nights he also reflects on how he will probably die alone and should probably get a little pet, like a cute dog or kitty. He wonders if he should try harder but he works, he goes to the comic book stores, and is the administrator of a Grey Anatomy fan group. Time is not infinite.

Maybe Dr. Cooper is right and he should focus on his research. Or Priya is right and he should go to bars and get wasted. He does not find the answer in the starts, but he do find their salary there so he eventually return to his observations. There is also some sort of peace to be found on the infinity of the cosmos.

***

Leslie tells Leonard his insecurities come from his childhood. Which everyone knows, but that it would also help if he stops being a dumbass. She hates specially Leonard misplaces loyalty to Dr. Sheldon Cooper who absolutely despises him. 

\- Don’t you think it is really messed up that you only got out of Dr. Sheldon Cooper Crazy Lair of Horrors because you blown up Howard’s yard with a rocket and felt so guilty you moved with them to help him fix it? And that latter the only thing that prevented you from returning to The Roommate of Arkham was meeting Stuart who was even more pathetic and moving with him?

Howard laughs.

\- Just adding into that, let’s not forget that even after you still felt so guilty that you constantly try to check on Cooper like trying to hear his conversation to figure whether Koothrappali is telling him?

Leslie nods while biting on a banana bit while eyeing Howard.

\- It’s really messed up Leonard. He detests you. You should stop.

Howard can be annoying but he is very smart and had a sense of humor. It’s him who prepared most of their activities and his mother cooks a killers brisket. He introduced him to Stuart, his current roommate who he drives currently to the hospital but he gets to read comic release before anyone so he think it’s fair. Leslie, became their friend after dating him, them becoming her friends with benefits, them dating Howard.

\- Leslie, _chérie_. Let Leonard and his match made in Stockholm, he is messed up but he is mine know and I love him as he is. - He pretends to makes a kissy face.- Also, a Batman reference is much appreciated.

Leslie looks disgusted.

\- It’s Lovecraft I was referencing, where you think Batman got that from? Leonard, seriously, seek help.

Leonard rolls his eyes because admittedly it is messed but he is not going to therapy anytime soon. Better safe than sorry. He stills tries to listen to the conversation on the other table.

He does feel guilty. Not a soul knows about Sheldon Cooper protecting him from a foreign spy, not even Howard. Dr. Cooper means well even if he was a very difficult person to live with, Leonard leaving the apartment had hurt him, he knows because to his knowledge he had stopped looking for a roommate since. He had also declared Leonard his enemy and rejected every peace offering from Leonard.

He was happy he seemed to be friends with Rajesh Koothrappali now. The Indian astrophysicist was very strange and he had never accepted their open invitations to hang out when he was new to the country. A quiet man, a bit arrogant maybe, but he could be good for Sheldon. Their time together was short but sufficient for Leonard to understand he craved friendship of some sort. Sadly he wanted to have full control on others and that is not how it works.

Leonard has a good feeling about this.

***

\- Can you believe doctor Koothrappali such quantities were destines to Biology?- He pronounces the discipline with so much disgust Raj checks to see if there are not offended biologists around.- We are trying to deciphers the mysteries of the universe and they found people that are trying to determine if the _Gloriana_ moths lifespan is of five or 10 days.

Rajesh tries to be at his most serious academic behavior but sometimes his mind wanders. And he goes to Gloriana, Shakespeare's Midsummer Night Dream Queen of Fairies, back to the vacations he spend with his family on a luxury train. What comes of his mouths is only a longing sights.

\- I rode on a Fairy Queen once...- He said, because sometimes his mouths decided that he had to say something and coherent conversation be damned.

\- Dr Koothrappali! - He is about to apologize when Dr. Cooper looks at him with enormous blue focused eyes. - Are you perchance referring to the marvelous engine, Indian National Treasure locomotive, the Fairy Queen also know as Calcutta, that now restored runs the New Delhi-Alwar line?

He is impressed, even more so when he gets to tell his memories of the travel and Dr. Cooper says “I too have a sister that was the balm of my youth” when he tells him how annoying Priya was kicking his shins. It’s a good time, even if they are not friends, which hurts a little. It makes Rajesh a bit sad at night but it’s also the reruns of Friends he watches.

He is barely thinking about it the next days when he drives, as he sometimes does, to Santa Monica first thing in the morning to do see to ocean and have a latte before work. One have to seeks little pleasures after all. Maybe one day he will have someone to share it with.


End file.
